cl3opatra

[cl3opatra]

the artist and the art.

two worlds i could not marry

glances, lights crowning him.

he sings our break up song.

lyrics, blades. end

i stand among strangers

a shadow before and now

unseen, unraveling.

i clap and smile and laugh.

my heart is shattered

a muse of endings

[cl3opatra]

And when love visits again, i hope it speaks gently to my ruins.

[cl3opatra]

depression knocks again,

laboured breathing, bleeding palms

alone. no one can know of this pain.

it is inapprehensible.

my heart ripping apart

so much silence

not even poetry could save me.

only love.

and i had lost it in greed.

i beg you to throw me scraps.

a beggar locked in the attic of your soul.

starving on memories.

you don’t even come here anymore.

i rot in your quiet.

a corpse you buried alive beneath your indifference.

[cl3opatra]

there is something missing. it's wednesday.

a memory. it was always a wednesday. in your arms, routine, soft, derailment.

it's been a week. my heart ripping open again, quietly, in staccato.

my shakes are back, small earthquakes beneath my skin.

my palms scratched, still bleeding, still raw,

this time, not for you. just for the ache. just for the leaving.

grief knows no boundaries

it presses against the edges of sleep, of hunger,

gnawing at the seams of identity, asking who are you now that love has gone quiet?

i was told once that i was a child of the universe,

no less than the bees and the stars,

and i hold onto that like prayer, like proof,

because the stars still burn, even when they die.

combustion feels familiar, meteors, my heart,

the violence of light falling through sky.

i live in a violent body.

ripping open every time i find love.

trained to survive on scraps, to need only drops,

and when i finally gulped,

when i drank from you like it would last,

my heart, greedy thing, had to rip.

now i sit with the stitches.

threaded with longing, pulled tight with memory.

hoping they hold.

[cl3opatra]

there are parts of me,

hurting so bad, charring

i brought this to myself.

i cry.

the self sabotage.

the wanting to be safe.

to have a backup.

i love you.

in the midst of all this bleeding.

even when i do not know how.

i love you.

last words i can conjure.

[cl3opatra]

love,

me and you are suicidal stolen art,

a masterpiece left in the rain,

colors running, hands trembling,

a love that was never meant to last.

i try to unwrite you,

to carve your name out of my ribs,

but grief clings,

heavy, suffocating, refusing to let go.

did you know?

that when you walked away,

you left me holding all the sharp edges,

bleeding out in a room full of memories

that will never love me back.

[cl3opatra]

sometimes i think

i escaped the depression

that spider web that took

all my youth.

i dance in the streets,

laugh so often.

so why

is it 8:44 pm

bawling my eyes out

wishing for my inexistence

the web,

tugging at my heart

in different directions,

daring it to rip

[cl3opatra]

i look at the skies,

erratic clouds, peace.

sunset.

the road below, cars,

a train passes.

i am no longer despondent.

the wind blows my sadness away

i am in your arms, home.

your chest rises and falls

calm.

grateful.

to experience such slowed living

such magnificence.

it's december 15th.

i am back home to you.

at last.

[cl3opatra]

They ask for an emergency contact.

I freeze. blank.

You used to be mine—

the person I'd trust when the world caved in.

Now, I’m constantly lost,

stuck between reaching out and holding back,

can't erase your number in my mind.

My mortal enemy, memory,

drags me through the days we laughed,

the nights we spilled secrets like lifelines.

But now, your name feels foreign on my lips,

and I wonder if you still think of me at all.

How did we become strangers,

when once we were each other’s world?

I could call, but I know

the silence would answer louder than words.

And so, I leave your name where it lingers—

in the past, a place I can’t return to,

no matter how much I want to.

[cl3opatra]

there are days i think i have survived this deep-seated loneliness

And there are others— I scratch my bleeding palms just to feel something, anything,

to remind myself I'm still here, even if I wish I wasn’t.

Some nights, the emptiness whispers, filling the spaces where hope used to live. And I wonder,

if survival is just another word for learning how to carry the weight

of a heart that never stops aching.

[cl3opatra]

There are things that never change—

my heart, too quickly bound,

too quickly shattered.

I know no other music

than the sound of shards

tearing through what's left of me,

a melody of breaking, over and over.

I know no other home

than the ruins of love,

cold and distant,

yet somehow familiar—

the only place I've ever known.

[cl3opatra]

I ask you if you can hear

the sound of my heart breaking.

You laugh at the joke—

I join in,

over the shatter,

the shards cutting the tendons

of hope that once held me together.

I have heard this symphony before—

"Unwanted, Unloved," a song

I know by heart.

And still, I dance.

Silent, graceful, bleeding.

Hoping one day,

the music will change,

or maybe I'll learn

to stop listening.

[cl3opatra]

August 31st—the end of all beginnings.

inspired by franz kafka; from my diary. (3)

[cl3opatra]

i think it's 3 am

we are in bed, you hold me

i am your favourite memory

i keep you up with the wounds of my past,

you salve them with the worries of yours.

we talk of the world,

two lost souls

under the cold rainy night,

you whisper, rest.

i cry, you play with my feet,

nostalgia. it's been a year.

i still see your face in the rough drafts

of all my sad poems

you have a new favourite.

i am lost. you were my anchor

my home

i am homeless.

[cl3opatra]

your gentle hands, the twitch of your body in sleep,

slight snores and silent affection,

gin and cigarretes,

i get caged, a captive of your expanse

i slowly make this my home,

even when i have been homeless,

for an eternity

[cl3opatra]

my whole life has become a ghostown of everything I've ever loved and lost. what am i if not just the absence of you?

-noelia

[cl3opatra]

EILEEN 2023 — dir. William Oldroyd